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3 Steps to Chunking Your Online Course

Are your learners performing poorly on their course evaluations? Are you seeing a decrease in grades across the board? If so, perhaps you should try a new eLearning technique – Content chunking.

What is content chunking?

Content chunking is a method of presenting information into small pieces or “chunks” of information to make reading and understanding faster and easier. Chunking is especially useful for material presented on the web because readers tend to scan for specific information on a web page rather than read the entire page.

Content chunking is one of the best techniques for designing and delivering successful online courses. So, how do you chunk your content? These are 3 simple steps to get you started.

1. Prioritize.

When creating your online course, remember to prioritize your content. Determine the main points and the supporting materials, including visuals. Create your course with the correct progression of content in mind – build on the information, rather than skipping around.

2. Simplify.

If you give your students too much information at once, they won’t remember it. Simplify your course material to only include relevant and necessary content. Don’t forget to include visuals; they are a simple way to include valuable information for your students as well.

3. Organize.

After you weed out the unnecessary course content, it is time to organize everything on the screen. Remember, keep it simple and do not overwhelm your students with too much information at once. Here are a few common ways to organize your material:

Bulleted/numbered lists

Short subheadings

Short sentences with one or two ideas per sentence

Short paragraphs, no more than 3 to 4 sentences

Easily scannable text, with bolding of key phrases

With these 3 simple steps, you will be on your way to online course chunking in no time! Have some more tips for us? Please, share them!

Sarah Bright

Communications Director

Sarah Bright is the communications director, content editor, and social media voice for DigitalChalk. She has found her niche in writing about the eLearning industry and sharing tips and tricks for building successful online courses.